I dont know if this is the same hotel but...I was told the other day that one of the hotels had arranged a fleet of buses to come into to New Orleans to rescue the people stuck in their hotel. Each resident paid $45 as part of the cost to bring the buses in. When the buses arrived, they were commandered by the Mayor to pick up people at the Superdome. If he allowed some later buses to pick up visitors at the hotel, he may have been paying them back for taking their privately funded buses.
He hadn't been properly bribbed yet.